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A 12-year veteran of the NYPD has been slapped with assault charges for rapping a man across the face with his nightstick — breaking the man’s bones and the baton – earlier this year in the Bronx.

Marc A. Rios, who works at the 52nd Precinct, was driving in a patrol car with his partner in the Kings Bridge Heights section around 4:20 a.m. March 30, when a man leaving a nightclub felt like the vehicle almost struck him. The man hit the right front end of the car and cursed the cops, authorities said.

Rios got out of the car, whipped out his baton, and cracked it across the man’s face, Assistant DA James Cudden told Judge Steven Barrett after an indictment was unsealed at Bronx Supreme Court this morning.

“It was an unprovoked incident,” Cudden said.

The cops drove away — and their sergeant then responded to a 911 call about the injured man.

Rios allegedly told the sergeant, “That must be my bag of shit,” according to Cudden.

Rios’s lawyer, Angelo MacDonald, said the officer acted in self-defense when the man — who was “quite likely… highly intoxicated” — disobeyed an order to stop. The man, his hands hidden beneath a jacket, approached Rios rapidly, MacDonald said.

Rios, an experienced police officer with 300 arrests under his belt, did the right thing, according to MacDonald.